Boats float on the stars, a scarecrow waltzes with crows, a magic wand transforms a snowman, a box bursts with enthusiastic jazz musicians. These are the images and worlds created by talented local artist, Keenu Hale. Today, I’m going to sing his praises.
For several years, Keenu has been a welcome guest at Cotsen Critix, our literary society for kids ages 9-12 (you also might recall hearing about him and his awesome cartooning skills at our How to Train Your Dragon event). A few facts about Keenu: he won his first drawing contest at 18 months; he is an artist with autism; he was featured in a television interview for the AttachAvi Autism Foundation in 2016; he generously gives his time to children’s hospitals, autism fundraisers, and art festivals; he is currently an animation major at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In short, Keenu totally rocks.
Keenu’s draws inspiration from Jim Henson and Tim Burton. Jim Henson for his odd, slapstick humor, and Tim Burton for his dark, somewhat creepy worlds. You can see how he blends both perfectly.
Keenu has hundreds of original characters and story lines. Take, for example, his debut comic book, Life in the Suburbs. In the story, a human boy named Timmy lives with his non-human scarecrow family. While Burlap and Cotton (his parents), are happy to live on the farm, Timmy wants to live in the suburbs. But as Timmy and his siblings Lacy and Jinko learn, moving in and fitting in are two very different things! The comic is charming, funny, and really nicely paced.
Keenu also collaborated with his cousin to produce Queen, You Are Beautiful! It follows the life of Queen, a young girl who must deal with bullies and discover her inner beauty.
When Keenu visits our library, we always start with an interview and a viewing of his vast portfolio. Then he does a drawing exercise with the kids. At the very end of the workshop, Keenu makes custom freehand drawings of whatever characters the kids can think of. He does each drawing in minutes. It’s amazing. Here are just a few from his last visit (including one of his own characters, Rosemary):
Many thanks to Keenu for allowing us to share his art! All images courtesy of the artist.
We’ve created plenty of matching games at story time, but what about an un-matching game? Search under the snow to find 4 leaves for your bird nest. But look carefully – no two leaves can be alike!
To make the nest, cut a box down to 2.5″ and then wrap it with strips of brown construction paper. We used 
Set the birds and nest aside for a moment, it’s time for the game! I had some “Fabric Fall Leaves” from Discount School Supply (a pack of 200 costs $6). Katie used a permanent marker to draw 24 sets of leaves. Each set consisted of 4 shapes – a triangle, a rectangle, a circle, and a square.
We scattered all 96 leaves on top of a brown bed sheet…
And heaped a ton of 
The story time kids dug into the snow to find a set of leaves, keeping in mind that the shapes on the leaves could NOT match! I did, however, post drawings of the shapes nearby, so they could remember which shapes they were looking for.
Not in the mood to say please, thank you, or wait your turn in line? Are you grabbing stuff that isn’t yours, refusing to share, and not listening to others? This rude behavior could describe you. Or it could be your HAT.
Circle a strip of white poster board around the crown of the hat and attach it with tape. You don’t want your cake hat to be towering above your head, so our poster board strips were just 6″ tall. Additionally we offered the poster board in 3 different color choices: white, pink, or brown.
Next, cut a paper plate to fit the top of the poster board circle, then attach it with tape or hot glue.
Time to decorate! We cut a number of scalloped icing drips from white, pink and brown construction paper. We also offered 
We had sheets of tissue paper available for those who needed to make their hats a little more snug. But I have to share the following innovation with you – a pipe cleaner hat strap and jaunty tissue paper cape. May I present…the most dapper…Captain Cake!